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20.8.12

Adventure is out there!

On August 19th 2012, I woke as I usually do, crusty eyed and surly on the couch of a friend in some place other than my home. I have once again stayed up just a bit to late talking and drinking and doing what we should all be doing, enjoying life and the hospitality of my momentary companions.

At this point in my trip I had left the glow of the ladies of Woodlands CA and was safe in the hands of the infamous Sooz.

It seems we were both late risers but having been dosed with coffee so strong it would make a Turkish man weep it was somewhat pain free to start our day and my journey out of the USA. We had it all planned out, this day would work like clockwork!

That's when it all began. 10 Mins before we ran out the door I remembered that I forgot to call my credit card company and my bank and let them know I would be hitting foreign soil, oops! I had thrown my phone into the mail the previous day and felt adrift with out the comfort of my cellular blankie but I somehow mustered the strength to use a land line (%$@%@ who still has a landline???) and even amused myself in my lack of dexterity in maneuvering through the handsets buttons...buttons?

Places were close, places were open, I got upsold and then 40 mins later I was done. Lightning packing produced heavy bags that were schlepped and I prayed to the powers that be to send me such schleppers all along the way, my main bag has somehow gained weight and is hovering at the 45-50lbs range, and thats only one of my two bags!

Finally in the car. Bug spray and batteries!

In the car again.

Fearless driver seen below:

It's hot outside, and I mean a hot that no San Franciscan can understand. It's a hot that you can't deny and you just have to open up accept and let it have its way with you. Well unless you have AC then you're set, until this happens to you.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a ....

^#$^#%&%$#&

I think Sooz and I are the happiest flat tire acquirers that you could ever meet.

We laughed, we sweated and we were RESCUED! These nice men were sweet and helpful and full of tips.

I began to think of Ben seen on the left as a second father, he told us "don't you dare drive to Mexacali on this donut" (we were almost to La Mesa several hours away from Mexicali)

He asked where we were going and he said, "Only place hotter than Hell is Mexicali" and as far as I can say he was right!

He also told us to bring lots and lots of water because if we got one flat we would probably get another, and he told us Mexicali has great Chinese food! Who knew!

After that we were more than happy to land in La Mesa, back to my family. They sympathized with us, found us a place to get the tire changes and made us lunch! My Poppo put some veggie burgers on the grill.

This man (seen below) is the most adorable man ever, he's my 92 year old grandfather and I love him so much! His friend Louise is over and it was her 95th birthday!

After resting, rehydrating, and refueling we are off again through the desert.

I love the desert, it's so scruffy. I hate seeing all the border patrol cars, lame lame lame.

And soon we are getting near. Here, on the border, cell phones are a funny thing...I can't help but think it's all about capitalism and the USA's negative view on our Southern neighbors. For whatever reason calling over the boarder via cell phone is a tricky thing...Alejandra can call us but we can't seem to call her. So we rely on the power of FB to let her know we are near and need her to call us.

The gangster hotel is our chosen rendezvous point but somehow we miss each other! Like two ships passing and passing in the night we miss each other over and over again. Despite the brown hair there is no disguising that yes I am white, and you would think so close to the border it wouldn't be such a shock but to some it is.

I don't mind, and in a way I find it comforting, that's right I'm not home, my Spanish sucks, I have a bag the same size/weight of a child strapped to my back and another to my front.
Who the hell knows where I'm really going after this, I sure don't, and all of this is invigorating.

After some time we collide with my lovely host Alejandra and are lead to her house.

And alls well that ends well in the not so distant city of Mexicali Mexico.

Meditations

"You can't stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes"

~Winnie the Pooh

"Such objects made up the daily luggage of this eternal traveler, rootless soul who made his home in dance studios, rehearsal rooms, and on stages around the world."

“It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig. Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me. When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic. No rhetoric, no tremolos, no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell. And of course, no theology, no metaphysics. Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light. So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling, on tiptoes and no luggage, not even a sponge bag, completely unencumbered.”

— Aldous Huxley, "Island"

"A true journey is much more than a vivid or vacant interval of being away. The best travel was not a simple train trip or even a whole collection of them, but something lengthier and more complex: an experience of the fourth dimension, with stops and starts and longueurs, spells of illness and recovery, hurrying then having to wait, with the sudden phenomenon of happiness as an episodic reward."

– Paul Theroux, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

"Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could."

– Louise Erdrich

"A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving."

~Lao Tzu

“We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.”~Anais Nin

"When you are on stage you are having an affair with three thousand people." -Gelsey Kirkland

"For me there is only the traveling on paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart. There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse it's full length. and there I travel, looking, looking breathlessly."

~Don Juan

"It does not matter how slow you go so long as you do not stop."—Wisdom of Confucius